Along with the release of the all-new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 5G and Galaxy Z Flip 3 5G smartphones, Samsung has begun shipping two new and innovative smartwatches that are highly functional, versatile, sleek and stylish.
The Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic are the first two smartwatches to be powered by the Wear OS 3 operating system, which is a joint development project between Samsung and Google (the developer of the Android operating system for smartphones).
In traditional Samsung fashion, the company is calling this new software “One UI Watch,” which is based on “Wear OS Powered by Samsung.” Announced at Google I/O 2021, Samsung and Google have essentially joined forces in an effort to improve the smartwatch experience for Android users. And with the Galaxy Watch 4 lineup, the culmination of months of hard work has officially arrived.
Unlike many smartwatches on the market, the Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic offer customizability and versatility—from both a visual and functionality standpoint. The operating system comes bundled with a bunch of core apps that allow the watch to communicate and exchange data seamlessly with a smartphone and handle a wide range of tasks.
There’s also a vast and ever-growing selection of optional apps and digital watch faces available. Combine this with the advanced biometric sensors and other tech that’s built into these latest Galaxy smartwatches, and you’ll quickly discover you have a powerful device on your wrist that makes it a superior productivity, communications, organizational, entertainment and health fitness tool. Oh and yes, it does tell time too.
Samsung Galaxy Watch4: Technical Specifications
Price: $249 | Case Sizes: 40mm, 44mm | Display: 40mm: 1.2-inch Super AMOLED (396 x 396), 44mm: 1.4-inch Super AMOLED (450 x 450) | Processor: Samsung Exynos W920 (5 nm) | Memory: 1.5GB | Storage: 16GB internal | Battery size: 247 mAh | Sensors: BioActive Sensor (Optical Heart Rate / Electrical Heart / Bioelectrical Impedance), Accelerometer, Barometer, Gyro, Geomagnetic, Light | Dimensions: 40.4 x 39.3 x 9.8mm (40mm), 44.4 x 43.3 x 9.8mm (44mm) | Weight: 25.9g (40mm), 30.3g (44mm) | Durability: IP68, 5ATM, MIL-STD-810G | Wireless Charging: Yes, Qi charging | SIM Card Optional: Yes, LTE
Price: $349 | Case Sizes: 42mm, 46mm | Display: 42mm: 1.2-inch Super AMOLED (396 x 396), 46mm: 1.4-inch Super AMOLED (450 x 450) | Processor: Samsung Exynos W920 (5 nm) | Memory: 1.5GB | Storage: 16GB internal | Battery size: 361 mAh | Sensors: BioActive Sensor (Optical Heart Rate / Electrical Heart / Bioelectrical Impedance), Accelerometer, Barometer, Gyro, Geomagnetic, Light | Dimensions: 41.5 x 41.5 x 11.2mm (42mm), 45.5 x 45.5 x 11.0mm (46mm) | Weight: 46.5g (42mm), 52g (46mm) | Durability: IP68, 5ATM, MIL-STD-810G | Wireless Charging: Yes, Qi charging | SIM Card Optional: Yes, LTE
Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 Colors
Samsung
Priced at $249, the Galaxy Watch4 (Wi-Fi only) is now Samsung’s gateway into the Android smartwatch space. The watch is available in either a 40mm or 44mm case size, bringing either a 1.2-inch or 1.4-inch Super AMOLED display.
Compared to the Galaxy Watch3, this drop in price quite drastic as last year’s model started at $399. However, things don’t look as drastic when you consider that the Galaxy Watch4 is the direct successor to the Galaxy Watch Active 2, which was released at $279.99.
The better comparison to the Galaxy Watch3 is the Galaxy Watch4 Classic, which retains the rotating bezel that many have fallen in love with. The display sizes are the same between the Watch4 and Watch4 Classic. But the casing sizes and battery life are increased, coming in either 42mm or 46mm and including a 361 mAh battery.
For added customizability, a selection of watchbands and casing colors are available based on which watch model you choose. For example, the Galaxy Watch 4 has an aluminum casing that comes in black, green, silver, or pink gold, while the Galaxy Watch 4 Classic has a stainless steal casing that comes in black or silver.
Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic Side-by-Side
Samsung
Meanwhile, arguably the largest hardware update to the Galaxy Watch 4 series is Samsung’s all-new Exynos W920 chipset. And it’s built on the same 5nm process as the Snapdragon 888 found in many 2021 flagship smartphones.
Samsung claims this new W920 processor offers 20% faster CPU performance and an incredible 10x better GPU performance compared to the last generation. That may not be saying much when you take into consideration that the Galaxy Watch3’s chipset is two years old, but it’s still impressive nevertheless.
Both the Galaxy Watch4 and Watch4 Classic are powered by the Exynos W920 processor, which is paired with 1.5GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard storage. This will provide plenty enough power to handle all of your favorite apps, while also saving room for offline music downloads and more.
In terms of battery life, Samsung claims you’ll get up to 40 hours on a single charge, which is good enough to get you through at least a day and a half. Samsung includes quick charge capabilities, allowing a 30 minute top-off to provide an additional 10 hours of battery life.
Many of the smartwatch’s apps rely heavily on Internet access. For this reason, both a Wi-Fi only and Wi-Fi + 4G LTE (cellular data) connectivity option is available, although the Wi-Fi + LTE models cost slightly more and may require an extra monthly fee from your smartphone’s cellular service provider. The cellular data functionality, however, allows the watch to work almost entirely autonomously from your smartphone.
Health and Fitness Features Galore
Smartwatches are great for handling a wide range of tasks in a way that supplements your smartphone, but the real benefit comes with the built-in health and fitness tracking features. Samsung really loaded up the Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic.
Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 Classic with Orange Band
Samsung
For the first time on a Galaxy Watch, you’re able to use the watch’s built-in BioActive Sensor. This is a single sensor comprised of three other sensors including the following:
Optical Heart Rate
Electrical Heart Monitoring (ECG)
Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis
With this 3-in-1 health sensor, you are able to monitor your blood pressure, detect an irregular heartbeat, measure your blood oxygen (SpO2) levels and even measure your body composition. Being able to have your watch capture 2,400 data points in just 15 seconds is an incredible feat for those who want to know every detail when it comes to keeping track of health metrics.
How to Order the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4
The Galaxy Watch4 is available right now, and you can order it from Samsung’s website. With an eligible smartwatch trade-in, you can receive up to $135 off the watch price. An extra $15 discount is being offered to students, teachers, first responders, government employees and active military personnel.
The Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic are also now available from other retailers, including: Best Buy (which offers a price match guarantee), Amazon.com, Target, and Walmart.
Keep in mind, the price you will ultimately pay for the watch depends on whether you choose the Watch3 or Watch4 Classic model, which casing size you select, your chosen watch band, and whether you opt for Wi-Fi only or Wi-Fi + LTE connectivity. Right now, the best deals to be had involve trading in an older (but eligible) smartwatch model.
Although no one likes a know-it-all, they dominate the Internet.
The Internet began as a vast repository of information. It quickly became a breeding ground for self-proclaimed experts seeking what most people desire: recognition and money.
Today, anyone with an Internet connection and some typing skills can position themselves, regardless of their education or experience, as a subject matter expert (SME). From relationship advice, career coaching, and health and nutrition tips to citizen journalists practicing pseudo-journalism, the Internet is awash with individuals—Internet talking heads—sharing their “insights,” which are, in large part, essentially educated guesses without the education or experience.
The Internet has become a 24/7/365 sitcom where armchair experts think they’re the star.
Not long ago, years, sometimes decades, of dedicated work and acquiring education in one’s field was once required to be recognized as an expert. The knowledge and opinions of doctors, scientists, historians, et al. were respected due to their education and experience. Today, a social media account and a knack for hyperbole are all it takes to present oneself as an “expert” to achieve Internet fame that can be monetized.
On the Internet, nearly every piece of content is self-serving in some way.
The line between actual expertise and self-professed knowledge has become blurry as an out-of-focus selfie. Inadvertently, social media platforms have created an informal degree program where likes and shares are equivalent to degrees. After reading selective articles, they’ve found via and watching some TikTok videos, a person can post a video claiming they’re an herbal medicine expert. Their new “knowledge,” which their followers will absorb, claims that Panda dung tea—one of the most expensive teas in the world and isn’t what its name implies—cures everything from hypertension to existential crisis. Meanwhile, registered dietitians are shaking their heads, wondering how to compete against all the misinformation their clients are exposed to.
More disturbing are individuals obsessed with evangelizing their beliefs or conspiracy theories. These people write in-depth blog posts, such as Elvis Is Alive and the Moon Landings Were Staged, with links to obscure YouTube videos, websites, social media accounts, and blogs. Regardless of your beliefs, someone or a group on the Internet shares them, thus confirming your beliefs.
Misinformation is the Internet’s currency used to get likes, shares, and engagement; thus, it often spreads like a cosmic joke. Consider the prevalence of clickbait headlines:
You Won’t Believe What Taylor Swift Says About Climate Change!
This Bedtime Drink Melts Belly Fat While You Sleep!
In One Week, I Turned $10 Into $1 Million!
Titles that make outrageous claims are how the content creator gets reads and views, which generates revenue via affiliate marketing, product placement, and pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Clickbait headlines are how you end up watching a TikTok video by a purported nutrition expert adamantly asserting you can lose belly fat while you sleep by drinking, for 14 consecutive days, a concoction of raw eggs, cinnamon, and apple cider vinegar 15 minutes before going to bed.
Our constant search for answers that’ll explain our convoluted world and our desire for shortcuts to success is how Internet talking heads achieve influencer status. Because we tend to seek low-hanging fruits, we listen to those with little experience or knowledge of the topics they discuss yet are astute enough to know what most people want to hear.
There’s a trend, more disturbing than spreading misinformation, that needs to be called out: individuals who’ve never achieved significant wealth or traded stocks giving how-to-make-easy-money advice, the appeal of which is undeniable. Several people I know have lost substantial money by following the “advice” of Internet talking heads.
Anyone on social media claiming to have a foolproof money-making strategy is lying. They wouldn’t be peddling their money-making strategy if they could make easy money.
Successful people tend to be secretive.
Social media companies design their respective algorithms to serve their advertisers—their source of revenue—interest; hence, content from Internet talking heads appears most prominent in your feeds. When a video of a self-professed expert goes viral, likely because it pressed an emotional button, the more people see it, the more engagement it receives, such as likes, shares and comments, creating a cycle akin to a tornado.
Imagine scrolling through your TikTok feed and stumbling upon a “scientist” who claims they can predict the weather using only aluminum foil, copper wire, sea salt and baking soda. You chuckle, but you notice his video got over 7,000 likes, has been shared over 600 times and received over 400 comments. You think to yourself, “Maybe this guy is onto something.” What started as a quest to achieve Internet fame evolved into an Internet-wide belief that weather forecasting can be as easy as DIY crafts.
Since anyone can call themselves “an expert,” you must cultivate critical thinking skills to distinguish genuine expertise from self-professed experts’ self-promoting nonsense. While the absurdity of the Internet can be entertaining, misinformation has serious consequences. The next time you read a headline that sounds too good to be true, it’s probably an Internet talking head making an educated guess; without the education seeking Internet fame, they can monetize.
TORONTO – A new survey says a majority of software engineers and developers feel tight project deadlines can put safety at risk.
Seventy-five per cent of the 1,000 global workers who responded to the survey released Tuesday say pressure to deliver projects on time and on budget could be compromising critical aspects like safety.
The concern is even higher among engineers and developers in North America, with 77 per cent of those surveyed on the continent reporting the urgency of projects could be straining safety.
The study was conducted between July and September by research agency Coleman Parkes and commissioned by BlackBerry Ltd.’s QNX division, which builds connected-car technology.
The results reflect a timeless tug of war engineers and developers grapple with as they balance the need to meet project deadlines with regulations and safety checks that can slow down the process.
Finding that balance is an issue that developers of even the simplest appliances face because of advancements in technology, said John Wall, a senior vice-president at BlackBerry and head of QNX.
“The software is getting more complicated and there is more software whether it’s in a vehicle, robotics, a toaster, you name it… so being able to patch vulnerabilities, to prevent bad actors from doing malicious acts is becoming more and more important,” he said.
The medical, industrial and automotive industries have standardized safety measures and anything they produce undergoes rigorous testing, but that work doesn’t happen overnight. It has to be carried out from the start and then at every step of the development process.
“What makes safety and security difficult is it’s an ongoing thing,” Wall said. “It’s not something where you’ve done it, and you are finished.”
The Waterloo, Ont.-based business found 90 per cent of its survey respondents reported that organizations are prioritizing safety.
However, when asked about why safety may not be a priority for their organization, 46 per cent of those surveyed answered cost pressures and 35 per cent said a lack of resources.
That doesn’t surprise Wall. Delays have become rampant in the development of tech, and in some cases, stand to push back the launch of vehicle lines by two years, he said.
“We have to make sure that people don’t compromise on safety and security to be able to get products out quicker,” he said.
“What we don’t want to see is people cutting corners and creating unsafe situations.”
The survey also took a peek at security breaches, which have hit major companies like London Drugs, Indigo Books & Music, Giant Tiger and Ticketmaster in recent years.
About 40 per cent of the survey’s respondents said they have encountered a security breach in their employer’s operating system. Those breaches resulted in major impacts for 27 per cent of respondents, moderate impacts for 42 per cent and minor impacts for 27 per cent.
“There are vulnerabilities all the time and this is what makes the job very difficult because when you ship the software, presumably the software has no security vulnerabilities, but things get discovered after the fact,” Wall said.
Security issues, he added, have really come to the forefront of the problems developers face, so “really without security, you have no safety.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 8, 2024.
As online shoppers hunt for bargains offered by Amazon during its annual fall sale this week, cybersecurity researchers are warning Canadians to beware of an influx of scammers posing as the tech giant.
In the 30 days leading up to Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days, taking place Tuesday and Wednesday, there were more than 1,000 newly registered Amazon-related web domains, according to Check Point Software Technologies, a company that offers cybersecurity solutions.
The company said it deemed 88 per cent of those domains malicious or suspicious, suggesting they could have been set up by scammers to prey on vulnerable consumers. One in every 54 newly created Amazon-related domain included the phrase “Amazon Prime.”
“They’re almost indiscernible from the real Amazon domain,” said Robert Falzon, head of engineering at Check Point in Canada.
“With all these domains registered that look so similar, it’s tricking a lot of people. And that’s the whole intent here.”
Falzon said Check Point Research sees an uptick in attempted scams around big online shopping days throughout the year, including Prime Days.
Scams often come in the form of phishing emails, which are deceptive messages that appear to be from a reputable source in attempt to steal sensitive information.
In this case, he said scammers posing as Amazon commonly offer “outrageous” deals that appear to be associated with Prime Days, in order to trick recipients into clicking on a malicious link.
The cybersecurity firm said it has identified and blocked 100 unique Amazon Prime-themed scam emails targeting organizations and consumers over the past two weeks.
Scammers also target Prime members with unsolicited calls, claiming urgent account issues and requesting payment information.
“It’s like Christmas for them,” said Falzon.
“People expect there to be significant savings on Prime Day, so they’re not shocked that they see something of significant value. Usually, the old adage applies: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”
Amazon’s website lists a number of red flags that it recommends customers watch for to identify a potential impersonation scam.
Those include false urgency, requests for personal information, or indications that the sender prefers to complete the purchase outside of the Amazon website or mobile app.
Scammers may also request that customers exclusively pay with gift cards, a claim code or PIN. Any notifications about an order or delivery for an unexpected item should also raise alarm bells, the company says.
“During busy shopping moments, we tend to see a rise in impersonation scams reported by customers,” said Amazon spokeswoman Octavia Roufogalis in a statement.
“We will continue to invest in protecting consumers and educating the public on scam avoidance. We encourage consumers to report suspected scams to us so that we can protect their accounts and refer bad actors to law enforcement to help keep consumers safe.”
Falzon added that these scams are more successful than people might think.
As of June 30, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre said there had been $284 million lost to fraud so far this year, affecting 15,941 victims.
But Falzon said many incidents go unreported, as some Canadians who are targeted do not know how or where to flag a scam, or may choose not to out of embarrassment.
Check Point recommends Amazon customers take precautions while shopping on Prime Days, including by checking URLs carefully, creating strong passwords on their accounts, and avoiding personal information being shared such as their birthday or social security number.
The cybersecurity company said consumers should also look for “https” at the beginning of a website URL, which indicates a secure connection, and use credit cards rather than debit cards for online shopping, which offer better protection and less liability if stolen.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 8, 2024.
